‘FICTITIOUS REALITIES’ - a group exhibition with artists:
Carolyn Wall - ceramist
Diane Reid - ceramist
Sinead O'Connell - ceramist
Emma Donaldson – mixed media, sculpture
Betty Gannon - drawing
The title for the exhibition 'Fictitious Realities' came from themes that the five artists use in their work, some of these themes are: memory, storytelling, fictional worlds, decay and change, past and present, and the way the body is a fleeting thing.
Carolyn Wall Originally from Yorkshire and spending her formative years in Bath she moved to the west of Ireland in 1980. She graduated from GMIT in 2009 achieving an honours degree in fine Art specialising in ceramics.
Her work is centered round an exploration into her female lineage and the concept of presence in absence. The materials she works with are porcelain/flax slip and clay, cotton thread for knitting and lace. The transformation of the materials in the kiln is used to explore the transformative qualities of experience and emotion. The cotton thread and lace disintegrate during the firing process providing a material metaphor for presence in absence. Roses and spirals are also ongoing in her workDiane Reid Based in Kinvara, Co Galway, studied Art in both Limerick and Galway and has a Fine Art Honours degree in ceramics. She has exhibited in many group shows in Ireland and works in both porcelain and on paper.
Her current work is a visual exploration into the individual and elusive nature of early memory, the child's non-verbal world seen as possessing a dramatic and deeply felt integrity sometimes interpreted as fanciful or fictitious from an adult perspectiveSinead O'Connell lives and works on the Galway/Clare boarder. She uses clay as a means to express biography through allegory using animal and human imagery.
“When we suffer anguish we return to early childhood because that is the period in which we first learnt to suffer the experience of total loss. It was more than that. It was the period in which we suffered more total losses than in all the rest of our life put together.” ― John Berger
Emma Donaldson – mixed media, sculpture
Emma Donaldson works with memories of experiences belonging in the past, slipping into the consciousness of the present. These short-lived events provide the material and impetus to dismantle thought and bring it toward substance. Test projects examined the momentary and immaterial in writings about repeat daily walks that were presented on gallery walls. Watercolours help hold qualities of thought and lead to experimental objects referencing the body with low-key, usually domestic material: stained cotton, painted paper-mache and gloss.
Emma Donaldson (born, Belfast,lives in Armagh) studied Painting at Wimbledon School of Art, Royal College of Art, Graduate School of The University of Houston and Histories and Theories at the Architectural Association in London. Her mixed media practice incorporates drawing, writing presented visually, The Light Project and more recently object making. She has exhibited in the US, UAE, Europe and UK; recent exhibitions have included trouble = progress at MCAC, 2013 Portadown, Futures ’13, RHA, 2013, Dublin and The Past is Unpredictable at F.E. McWilliam Gallery & Studio’s, 2014, Banbridge. Forthcoming exhibitions include Palimpsest, Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast, Solstice Arts Centre, Navan, Museum of St Albans, England, Butler Gallery, Kilkenny, The Dock, Carrick on Shannon.
Betty Gannon Lives and works in Westport Co Mayo, mainly working in drawing, painting, and photography. She has exhibited nationally and internationally with solo and group shows
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Her drawings made with india ink and a mapping pen explore decay and change in our surroundings from exposure to the elements and human activity. Her interest in the inevitable process entropy – of things breaking down or wearing out – is the fact that something new has to happen, a change takes place, something is replaced, repaired, or just abandoned, and in the process our attention is dawn to the physical impressions of use that we left behind. www.bettygannon.com
